Chosen by Blood (35 page)

He knew immediately that they were the two vamps that O’Flare had seen in his vision.

Wildly, his gaze searched for and landed on Felicia. He spotted her feet first, which were shifting restlessly on the floor. Even as he felt a profound sense of relief that she was alive, his gaze moved swiftly up her body, inspecting her for injury, not stopping until it had no choice but to do so because the wrist extended above her head ended at his brother’s mouth.

Zeph had sunk his fangs into Felicia’s wrist and was sucking at her like a starving baby at a mother’s breast.

The words out of his mouth were automatic, even as his brain struggled to process what he was seeing. “Zeph, stop.”

Then something else registered.

Felicia’s feet were shifting as she tried to get purchase on the floor so she could escape. She was trying to back away from Zeph, pulling at her wrist even as he clung to it and growled warningly. Instantaneously, Knox felt the power of his mother’s ancestors flash through his veins like a bolt of electricity. He transformed, his rage and blood lust so much more powerful than what he’d felt in Quantico when Hunt had pushed Felicia.

Half growling and half roaring, he called Zeph’s name. His brother detached from Felicia’s wrist and Knox saw the blood—her blood—that stained his lips a macabre red. Vaguely conscious of Felicia’s eyes on him as well, he stared into his brother’s eyes. “You’re dead,” he said in a low, deadly voice before he lunged forward.

Or rather, he tried to lunge forward.

At first he thought that Zeph was using his power of persuasion to hold Knox in place, but that was impossible. Knox wore his medallion, the medallion made of such pure gold that it protected anyone who wore it from becoming susceptible to a vamp’s mind reading or persuasion power. It was an ancient discovery and one Knox’s clan had put into practice for the benefit of all. For a brief second, he thought of the scientists and his inability to read them. He hadn’t seen them wearing jewelry, but—

The force that was holding him back suddenly pushed into him, trying to bring him to the ground. Knox resisted, throwing all his weight backward. Trembling with the effort, he turned his head and locked eyes with Lesander. Niles clung to Knox’s other side, but it was Lesander who spoke.

“Hello, cousin. Fancy seeing you here. As much as I’d love to see you kill your brother, something tells me that before you did so, you’d be turning on us. Best to take advantage of the element of surprise, don’t you think?”

Based on the description of O’Flare’s vision, Knox had been prepared to discover betrayal. When he’d seen Lesander and Niles, their duplicity hadn’t been too difficult to accept; they’d always been pricks. Zeph’s betrayal, however, had stunned him. Now, he internalized Lesander’s words, clinging to the hope that Zeph was victim rather than foe. Knox narrowed his eyes. “I said he was dead. You? You’re going to wish I’d kill you way before I’m ready to stop hurting you.”

“You forget, Knox. You might have led this clan by virtue of your mother’s birth order, but I always could kick your dharmire ass even when we were kids. Now that you’re suffering the effects of malnutrition and I’m not, it’ll be easy as pie.”

“I’ve always hated pie, cousin.” Knox drove both his elbows back, one into each of his cousin’s ribs. As both vamps instinctively retreated, Knox spun. With one elbow bent at shoulder level, he rammed it into Niles’s head, shooting for the vulnerable spot where his ear had been ripped off during the War; he rubbed at the spot constantly and had often complained of its tenderness. Simultaneously, Knox grabbed Lesander’s hand and ducked under his arm, twisting it to the back of his body. He then knocked the vamps’ heads together, hard enough that the sound of impact echoed through the hall.

Desperately his gaze sought Felicia. She was on her feet, or at least halfway on them, as Zeph propped her up and led her to an alcove underneath the staircase. Knox cursed and teleported to them, immediately snatching Felicia away from his brother and sweeping her in his arms. “Are you with me or against me?” he snapped.

Zeph grinned and straightened to his full height. He’d already been in the process of transformation when Knox had first seen him, but it was still a shock to see him like this—his face full, his eyes bright and healthy, his body pumping up so it was nearly as tall and broad as Knox’s.

“With you all the way, Brother.”

“Behind you,” Knox growled an instant before he transported into the nursery. Instantly, he spotted his mother urging Joelle and Thomas into a closet. Inside the closet was a trap door that accessed a secret passage, which led beneath the house to a safe location outside the Dome.

“Knox,” his mother cried upon seeing him. She was trembling so badly that she could barely stand. Serena was supporting her and the vamp’s eyes reflected both the horror and fear thundering through Knox’s heart. Sobbing, the children hugged his knees, nearly toppling him.

He bent down, gently depositing a listless Felicia on the soft carpet, and hugged his children close. “Shush now. It will be all right.”

His mother threw her arms around him. “Thank God you got to her. I couldn’t—I couldn’t . . .” His mother started to weep, but as badly as Knox wanted to comfort her, he knew there wasn’t time.

Taking her arms, he pushed her away so he could meet her gaze. “Mother, listen to me. I have to help Zeph, but Felicia—Zeph drank from her . . .” Knox shook his head, still not understanding why Zeph had latched on to Felicia so tightly or why after drinking from her he’d recovered his full vamp strength. He knew Felicia, just like every other FBI employee, had to have taken the vamp vaccine. She wouldn’t have been able to continue working there otherwise. As he spoke, her eyes flickered and she moaned his name softly, but otherwise she seemed oblivious to what was happening.

Damn Zeph. What if he’d drunk too much?

“Stay with her, Mother,” Knox said, straightening. “Bring her and the children into the tunnels and get to the safe house. I’ll meet you there.”

“Knox!” His mother grabbed his arm. “She—she warned me, but she suspected Zeph. She was wrong, wasn’t she? Zeph’s not—”

“Zeph hasn’t betrayed us, but our cousins have. They’ll kill him if I don’t go back.” Torn, he pulled away. “Take care of them, Mother.”

His mother nodded. Straightening and looking him in the eyes, she said, “With my life.”

 

 

“One of them’s coming toward me,” said Wraith, who was still positioned several hundred feet away from the rest of them.

O’Flare, who was still feeling weak from the power of his vision, cursed softly. He looked at Hunt, then Lucy.

Lucy shook her head. “He’s too far away for me to use enchantment.”

“What about your telekinesis?”

“Even if I could affect anyone from this distance, which I can’t, what do you want me to do? Hold him back? That’d be the tiniest bit suspicious, don’t you think?”

“What about Wraith? Can’t you—I don’t know, can’t you fly her over here? Above the trees, so they don’t see her or something ?”

“You obviously think I’m way more powerful than I am.”

Fear for Wraith was blinding more than his reasoning. His vision was actually starting to blur, his limbs to shake. O’Flare stood. “I’m going to her—”

A low moan interrupted him.

O’Flare, who’d almost forgotten the were, looked over. His muscles froze in horror.

Holy fuck.

Hunt’s skin was undulating in slow steady waves, not as if his blood was boiling, but as if some creature had implanted itself inside him and was slithering around, viciously eating at his insides. Agony was too weak a word to describe the expression on Hunt’s face. The rippling was in his face, too, extending into his eyeballs so that they threatened to pop out of his head. Hunt’s jaw was lengthening as well, and his teeth, which were sharpening and growing, were clenched with the effort to hold back his moans of pain.

Bones broke and fractured as Hunt’s limbs shrank. Blood ran in long, thin rivulets, resembling ribbon that had been thrown carelessly across the were’s body. Although O’Flare wasn’t a hunter, he’d visited his mother’s people as a child and seen how they’d dressed various animals. Hunt’s body resembled the naked, veined carcass of a skinned fawn. O’Flare, who’d seen people’s insides and limbs severed countless times during the War, felt his stomach roll with nausea.

But still, he couldn’t look away.

In under two minutes, the transformation was complete. The wolf locked eyes with O’Flare. “Go to her,” O’Flare commanded.

Hunt blinked slowly, then turned and ran toward Wraith.

 

 

Having activated the security alarm in his office, which was the room closest to the foyer, Knox bolted into the foyer in time to see Lesander toss Zeph’s body through the air and toward Niles’s waiting arms as if he were a football. His lacerated face spewing hatred, Zeph twisted in midair and kicked his foot out; while he couldn’t stop his forward momentum into Niles, he managed to kick several of the vamp’s teeth out before knocking him down and falling to the floor himself.

When Zeph got in several good punches to his cousin’s face, the last one breaking his nose, Lesander leaped toward him. “Enough of this playing-around shit. Let’s rip the fucker’s heart out before the other one comes back.”

“Too late,” Knox whispered in Lesander’s ear before hooking his arm around the vamp’s neck and bending backward, forcing the vamp off his feet. “You and Niles never did play fair when we were kids. You never wanted to take us on when we were together. Well, we’re together now, aren’t we?” Lesander clawed at Knox’s arm and kicked backward, but Knox squeezed tighter. “You remember how you said killing me was going to be as easy as pie earlier? I have a really good feeling you’re about to choke on it. Look, your brother’s already started.”

Knox adjusted his hold, forcing Lesander to get a good look at his brother, whose head Zeph was repeatedly pounding into the ground. As they watched, Zeph ripped Niles’s medallion off his neck. Instantly, Niles’s limbs went slack and fell to the ground. He stared up at Zeph as Zeph stood and turned toward Knox.

“Good thinking,” Knox said even as he ripped Lesander’s matching medallion off. Lesander, however, didn’t fall under Knox’s spell. Instead, he laughed. “I’m smarter than my brother, Knox. I’ve got gold in places you wouldn’t believe.” Then, using the same trick that Knox had used on him, he drove his elbow into Knox’s side. Instead of relaxing his hold, however, Knox tightened it.

Lesander’s growl of rage transformed into a shout of pain when Zeph punched through his chest, breaking through flesh and bone and tissue to yank the vamp’s heart out of his chest. It was still beating as Zeph backed about ten feet from the vamp. Then, in a flash, Zeph transported himself to the hearth, where a fire was kept perpetually burning.

Even as Lesander gasped and heaved and growled, even as his still-pumping organ grew smoky and vibrated with the effort to return to him, Zeph clung to it tightly. “How about instead of making the bastard eat pie we make him watch his heart burn?”

“Where are you getting the pure blood?” Knox asked. “What do you know about the antidote that was stolen from the FBI’s labs?”

“Fuck. You,” Lesander moaned out.

Knox looked at Zeph. “Do it,” Knox said.

Zeph grinned. “Anything you say, big brother.”

“No,” Lesander whimpered. “Please don’t.”

Drawing his hand back, Zeph ignored him.

“You better talk fast,” Knox suggested.

“I don’t know where the blood comes from,” Lesander said swiftly. “Another vamp gives it to us. He just—he’s recruiting. For the North Koreans.”

“Why?”

“His girlfriend’s family is being held against their will.”

“His name, what’s his name?”

“Lafleur,” Lesander hissed.

Knox closed his eyes. It looked like Mahone’s loyal guard wasn’t so loyal after all. Knox felt absolutely no satisfaction at the knowledge.

As Zeph tauntingly moved Lesander’s heart closer to the fire, several vamps, dressed in the clan’s law enforcement uniform and carrying vamp stunners, teleported in front of them. The stunners fired a laser that, when fired between a vamp’s eyes, suppressed his brain activity for up to one hour—time enough to get the vamp into one of the little-used cells kept in a building at the very south of the Dome. The cell was constructed of a lethal combination of gold and lead, two of the many metals that played havoc with the electrical impulses that gave vamps their power. Once Lesander and Niles were inside it, they wouldn’t be able to use any of their powers, including that of teleportation.

The security officers stood frozen until Knox snapped, “Shoot this one now.” Augustus, the squad’s leader, immediately fired the laser with perfect accuracy. Lesander went limp in Knox’s arms. “Return the heart,” he instructed Zeph.

His brother did a reasonably good facsimile of a pout. “Do I have to?”

Knox glared at him.

“Fine.”

Zeph relaxed his fingers. Instantly, the heart rose and vibrated within a cloud of smoke before disappearing back into Lesander’s chest. Knox knew the moment it settled there by the slight jerk he felt in Lesander’s body. He immediately dropped him. “Secure both of them,” he commanded, before leaving to check on his family.

H
is mother had taken everyone to the safe house just as Knox had instructed. Her gasp of relief when Knox appeared was doubled when he told her Zeph was safe. Felicia still looked dazed when she stood to wrap her arms around him, but he felt her relief as well. Even as he wrapped his arms around her, even as he kissed her passionately, part of him was someplace else. Korea.

Knox had been gone for almost thirty minutes. He turned toward her. “I need to make sure the guards have properly contained my cousins and then I have to go back.”